Playing story files

Brass Lantern also runs Z-machine story files, the format Infocom’s games shipped in. The demo includes the Zork trilogy (Zork I Release 119, Zork II Release 63, Zork III Release 25), which Microsoft released under the MIT License in 2025. It plays exactly as Infocom wrote it, in the same CRT terminal as native worlds. The npm packages bring the interpreter, not the games: see Cartridges for adding story files to your own app.

Playing Zork

Open the demo and type 2 for Zork I. You start west of a white house, with a mailbox. The rest is up to you. Zork II (3) and Zork III (4) pick up where it leaves off, each opening with a brass lantern close by. Each game stands alone; nothing carries over between them.

If you’ve never played it, Zork’s parser is older and stricter than Brass Lantern’s:

Command	Notes
N S E W NE NW SE SW UP DOWN	Directions. Diagonals matter: the house is circled by them.
LOOK (L), EXAMINE thing	X isn’t a word in the Zork games; spell out EXAMINE.
TAKE thing, TAKE ALL, DROP thing	Also PUT thing IN thing.
INVENTORY (I)
OPEN, READ, MOVE, TURN ON, ATTACK creature WITH weapon	The verbs you’ll need most.
AGAIN (G)	Repeats your last command.
SCORE, DIAGNOSE	Your score, and how hurt you are.
VERBOSE, BRIEF	Full room descriptions every time, or only on your first visit.
SAVE, RESTORE	See Saving. SAVE before anything risky.
EJECT	Back to the cartridge menu. The game autosaves, so it’s there when you come back.

Brass Lantern’s own command splitting, the intent server and HINT don’t apply here. Zork’s parser chains commands itself (take lamp and sword, north. open door), but it has no hints, and it’s more fun that way. Map as you go.

Cartridges

A story file is a cartridge, listed in GameOptions.cartridges beside any native worlds. The demo’s list:

import { mountGame } from '@brass-lantern/vue';
import { tutorial, zork1 } from '@brass-lantern/engine/worlds';

mountGame('#app', {
  cartridges: [
    { kind: 'world', id: 'snack-attack', title: 'SNACK ATTACK', world: tutorial },
    { kind: 'zcode', id: 'zork1', title: 'ZORK I', story: 'stories/zork1.z3', format: 'Z-machine v3' },
    { kind: 'zcode', id: 'zork2', title: 'ZORK II', story: 'stories/zork2.z3', format: 'Z-machine v3' },
    { kind: 'zcode', id: 'zork3', title: 'ZORK III', story: 'stories/zork3.z3', format: 'Z-machine v3' },
    { kind: 'world', id: 'zork1-native', title: 'ZORK I · NATIVE', world: zork1 },
  ],
  storagePrefix: 'my-game',
});

• With more than one cartridge, the terminal shows a menu after it boots. Type a number to insert one; EJECT brings you back.
• With one cartridge, it boots straight in, with no menu.
• After a reload, the last cartridge you played comes straight back if it has a game in progress.

Story files aren’t in the npm packages. Host them with your app, as static files: story is fetched from storyBaseUrl (default /) plus that path, so a Vite app puts zork1.z3 in public/stories/, and one served from a subpath passes storyBaseUrl: import.meta.env.BASE_URL. Story files are binary and fetched on demand, and the interpreter is a separate chunk that loads only when a story cartridge is inserted, so a build that offers only native worlds never downloads it.

Getting Zork I, II and III. Microsoft released them under the MIT License in 2025, in the zork1, zork2 and zork3 repositories at historicalsource. The three files the demo plays are also in the Brass Lantern repo, in apps/site/public/stories/, each beside its license (LICENSE-zork1.txt and so on). The MIT License asks that its text travel with the files, so publish each license beside its story.

Playing your own story files

Got a story file? Type LOAD at the cartridge menu and pick it, or drag it onto the terminal. It plays straight away, and joins the menu, marked yours, for next time.

• It never leaves your browser. The file goes on a shelf in IndexedDB; nothing is uploaded, and the site never hosts it. That’s what makes this the way to play games you own but nobody may redistribute, like Infocom’s other titles from the Lost Treasures and Masterpieces collections.
• Accepted: Z-machine versions 3, 4, 5 and 8, raw (.z3, .z4, .z5, .z8) or in a Blorb (.zblorb, .zlb). Glulx games (.ulx, .gblorb) and version 6 (Zork Zero, Arthur, Shogun, Journey) aren’t supported, and LOAD says so.
• Saving works like any cartridge: SAVE, RESTORE, autosave, and resume on reload.
• REMOVE and its number takes a story off the shelf. Its saved games stay, so loading it again picks up where you were.
• Loading the same file twice keeps one copy; the cartridge is identified by the story’s release, serial number and checksum, not its file name. The title in the menu comes from the file name.
• If the browser won’t store it (private browsing, full storage), it still plays, until the next reload.
• Only in builds with a menu. A single-cartridge build boots straight into its game and has no LOAD.

Finding more story files

• The IF Archive holds thousands of Z-machine games, from the 1980s to this year. Files end in .z3, .z5 or .z8; LOAD plays them.
• Infocom’s other games are still under copyright, except Zork I, II and III, which Microsoft released under the MIT License in 2025 (historicalsource). Those three ship with the demo (see Cartridges for where to get them); the rest can’t be redistributed.
• Check the license before you publish one. Playing a story file locally is one thing; putting it on a public site is redistribution. Many IF Archive games allow it; some don’t.
• Writing your own: Inform 6 and ZIL (Infocom’s own language) both compile to the Z-machine.

Saving

• SAVE asks for a name, and RESTORE lists the saves you have; type CANCEL to back out. Saves live in your browser’s localStorage, per story.
• Autosave: the game also saves itself every turn, so a reload picks up exactly where you were.
• When the story ends (QUIT, or a final death), its autosave is cleared. Type PLAY to start again.

How it works

• ifvms (MIT), the Z-machine inside Parchment, runs the story.
• It talks to the screen through Glk, a standard interface for interactive fiction. @brass-lantern/engine includes a modified copy of glkapi.js, wrapped so each game gets its own instance.
• BrowserGlkOte turns the game’s screen updates into terminal lines, and its status line into the header.
• SaveStoreDialog stores saves and autosaves in any SaveStore: browser storage in the Vue terminal, a Map, a directory or a database in a Node host.

The game’s own echo of your command, and its > prompt, are dropped, since the terminal draws its own.

Limits

• SCRIPT (a transcript file) isn’t supported; it says so and the game carries on.
• Full browser storage (or any store that refuses a write) makes SAVE say “There’s no room to save that.”, rather than claiming success.
• A story that won’t download within 20 seconds shows an error; reload to try again, or EJECT.
• Formats: Z-machine versions 3, 4, 5 and 8 (what ifvms supports). No Glulx.
• Windows: only the status line from the upper window is shown, so games that draw menus or quote boxes there lose them.
• No graphics, sound or timed input.
• Loose phrasing: the intent server doesn’t help with story files, which have their own parsers.